My 2 cents about Thunderbird Specialties and Philip Wegener - cheat and crook, don't by anything from this company!
Our 2002 T-Bird wouldn't start this spring, it would just crank over but not start. I just thought it was a low battery even though the
tender is on and it shows it was charging just fine. I began some self diag thinking it was maybe a fuse or relay, have spares on hand, replaced each that it could be but still nothing. I looked around on the internet and after lots of reading it sounded like it could the REM module. Figuring it was beyond what I could fix, I put the T-Bird on the trailer and took to Bison Ford in Great Falls Montana, my local dealership who I have bought many many cars from. They diagnosed it and said it was either the REM or
fuel pump, it acted just like the owners 2 T-Birds and his daughters T-Bird when their REMs went out. I said lets start with the
fuel pump and that wasn't it so it looked to be the REM was bad. They used to send to a place in Detroit but they don't fix these anymore and at the time there wasn't any available from Ford. So we began a horrible route of trying to contact this company to fix. We sent the REM to Philip in agreement he could repair it, for an original cost of around $1100 though his website said charges began at only $250. Here is where everything went south...... After he received the REM in early June he didn't try to fix or repair, we mailed him multiple times and received no reply, we began to worry if this was a legit company, more on that later. Finally in late July/early August he replied saying he couldn't fix it but gave no answer as to why, don't think he even tried to repair it, he said for another $200 plus additional costs he could get a reman REM from Ford, now we were really confused, as Ford said none where available. Bison looked at their site and oddly they showed some were now available, we tried to order one, but couldn't as Philip locked up my VIN with a dealership in NC trying to get one ordered. We contacted dealer and said here is what Philip is trying to pull, they agreed that once they received my REM from him, they would ship the new REM directly to us, well he never sent my original REM to them and still has it. After some time of working with Ford, they released my VIN so we could do an order for a REM through Bison, after a few weeks we received the REM and our T-Bird is running again, with no help from Philip Wegener or Thunderspecialties.com. We have sent messages to him only to have him state that during the summer he sent mails to Bison and they never replied to him, he considers the matter closed but I have communicated with him that how can you consider it closed when you are still holding onto my REM and won't return it.
Long and detailed but after this encounter and hearing of others who have had similar encounters, I'd steer clear of Thunderbird Specialties and Philip Wegener, he will cheat you out and never get you your
parts you paid for.
